So the last few weeks I keep seeing my left arm and wondering “That’s mine, right?” It’s so weird. I didn’t have any troubles like this after the accident, despite both arms being immobilized, wrapped in bandages, and stuck in slings. Even after surgery when I had huge incisions and giant metal screws drilled through the flesh of my left arm, I had no trouble recognizing it as mine.
But now, over nine months after my injuries, I sometimes move my left arm into view and I think “Whose arm is that?” It’s not that I can’t feel it, I can. I think it’s because my right arm is finished and the left still has so far to go. I’ve got about 95% range of motion back on the right side, and the muscle has filled in quite nicely. It looks (minus the scars) like my arm did before the accident. But my left is still locked into a limited range, and still quite a bit weaker and smaller. So now there’s this disparity between them, and the right one looks like it used to, and so I think that’s tricking my brain into thinking of the left one as some kind of other.
It’s really bizarre. I’m mostly experiencing this when I’ve got something in my hand. Like, I see the arm and I’m thinking “I’m carrying a plate. My arm should be straight. Whose arm is this that’s bent like that?”
So, weird body stuff that I’m surprised didn’t pop up before now.
